Monday, September 7, 2009

Brain... unable... to function...

Woooooweeee... Pattern writing is difficult! I'm trying to write out a pattern for myself to make this sweater, which I spied on the Sears.ca website:

I've got the wool all ready to go - it's the Cascade 220 that I balled yesterday (well, I made one ball, ok?). I've been spending a lot of time thinking of all the finer details, like: how do I increase in seed stitch? How do I make those pockets? When should I start decreasing at the neckline to get that nice collar? Owwwww... my brain hurts. I think I've got the pattern to the state where I can't really continue until I start working on it.

I also spent this morning making a test sleeve for this project. I'm using the cabled sleeve from Mariah, which was featured on knitty.com a couple of years ago. I'm getting rid of the purl "background" on each edge and just throwing those cables in to float in the seed stitch, all raised and celtic-like. I still don't know when I'm going to start the cables on the front yet, but I'm guessing I'll start them earlier than later - it'd look dumb to just have them start before I have to finish them!

Apparently, seed stitch relaxes a bit more than stockinette. I'm using Amy Swenson's Rosedale as a template for this design (which I made last year for myself), but I may have to make it a size smaller than I would have, just to account for the positive ease, but I think I may just wait to see how the sleeves turn out before I do that.

All this waiting is not fun. I am planning to cast on later this afternoon on a smaller project before I tackle this one. I need a bit of space from this. I just don't know how pattern-writers do it!